


Raid

by INMH



Series: hc_bingo fanfiction fills 2019 [44]
Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Death, Drama, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gun Violence, Hurt/Comfort, Political Extremism, Romance, Strong Language, Suspense, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-30
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-13 03:04:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,201
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21237101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/INMH/pseuds/INMH
Summary: Catastrophe breaks loose at Jericho as a radical android hunts for Markus.





	Raid

Every Thursday night, the members of the Liberated Android Alliance had a community meeting of sorts.  
  
Most of them found themselves gathering together in an old, abandoned cannery in the same neighborhood where the original Jericho had stood. Others would listen remotely from other parts of the city, or later watch it online when Alexa inevitably posted it to the internet. The meetings always found their way onto the internet, after some careful editing to ensure that the authorities or other aggravated parties wouldn’t be able to tell where they were. Thankfully, the parts of Detroit that hadn’t benefitted from restoration yet had many places to gather in secret.  
  
That was how androids had survived for so long before the revolution.  
  
David and Alexa were keeping the tradition alive.  
  
“So!” He called once everyone was assembled. It was usually him that spoke: He had the charisma for the community meetings, and Alexa had the cutting, biting rhetoric that could whip up the anger in a room to a boiling point. “We’ve got some news coming out of Jericho.” He smirked, looking around the room. “Anyone know what it is?”  
  
There was a pause- either because nobody knew, or because nobody wanted to be the ones to say it- and then finally someone from the back of the room burst out: “Fucking _schooling!_”  
  
A wave of laughter started, and David chuckled too. “That’s right! Markus wants to send the YK500s and YK600s to human school, right along with the human kids.”  
  
Several shouts of protest met the statement, as expected.  
  
“Apparently, Celia, Darren, and Joanna are starting to advocate for it in their cities too!” David had never had the pleasure of meeting Portland, Houston, or Charleston’s resident android leaders, but as they were friendly with Markus and seemed to espouse the same bootlicking ideas that he had, David assumed that they were every bit as submissive and pathetic as he was.  
  
“What’s even the point?” Marianne, an ST300 almost identical to Alexa, called. “Other than putting a bunch of android kids through hell?”  
  
David shrugged. “Hell if I know.” He had plenty of inklings, but found it was best for others to reach the conclusion on their own instead of leading them to it. It reduced the odds of them regretting their decisions later on.  
  
“They just want the humans to see YK500s and YK600s as _human_ kids,” A female TROJAN-1000 that David didn’t recognize sneered. “They’re _android_ children, but they want to send them for a fucking human education so that the humans will start seeing our kids the same they see _their_ kids. It’s idiotic.”  
  
In a pattern that had become typical for these meetings, a few opinions gave rise to an avalanche of them:  
  
“All that’s going to happen is that these kids are gonna get beaten and harassed by their classmates. And if they try to fight back, the human teachers are just going to assume the android kids were the aggressors. They’ll never give them a fair shake.”  
  
“And Markus will make his usual bullshit apologetics for it, like we should be kowtowing to human opinion.”  
  
“He’d do that pacifist bullshit all the way back to the recycling centers if we let him. Why the hell should we let him do this to the kids?”  
  
“Well, how do we _stop_ it? There’s at least one-thousand YK500 and YK600 androids in Detroit alone, and they’ll be shipping them all over the city come September.”  
  
“We could protest the schools.”  
  
“Or fuck with them, so they think twice about taking the android kids in.”  
  
“Or, we could just stop Markus.”  
  
Silence fell. Laney, a WR400, was standing with her arms crossed. “What do you mean by that, Laney?” David asked.  
  
“I mean we should do what we should have done months ago and kill the asshole.”  
  
Silence.  
  
David was nothing if not good at reading a room. And while he certainly wouldn’t mind if Markus were to drop dead through one means or another, he knew that there were many androids in this room that drew the line at killing their own kind. Not all of them, but most of them, and he had to account for that before he made any calls or publicly supported any controversial decisions.  
  
“Maybe another day, Laney.”  
  
“Why?” Laney demanded. “Why not now? Why not just put him down like the fucking _dog_ he is.”  
  
More silence.  
  
David knew there were people that agreed with Laney, people that hated Markus as much as she did; he was one of them, frankly. But he also knew that those same people knew how easily these situations could snowball out of control. Hell, the humans were calling that incident back in February an assassination attempt on Markus, when all David and Alexa had instructed the android in question to do was to _follow_ Markus and see what he was up to, to get ahead of any scheming on his part. They’d called the others they’d had keeping tabs on high-profile members of Jericho off after that, not wanting a repeat incident. Almost everyone had agreed that the decision to attack Markus then and there had been a stupid one.  
  
No, they weren’t going to give momentum to Laney’s idea. She was asking for something too extreme, too difficult to predict the outcome of, and they knew that encouraging this tact might end badly for the LAA overall.  
  
There were bigger and better ways to fuck with Markus without nailing their entire organization for murder.  
  
“Take it down a notch,” David advised; hardly the first time that he’d ever had to tell someone to calm down in one of these meetings. Laney wasn’t the first to propose something on the crazier side. “Seriously think through the consequences of that sort of thing. The humans are looking for an excuse to come down on us, and if we kill their biggest fanboy they’ll consider that reason enough to come down on every single android associated with us.”  
  
There were murmurs of assent to that, and it only seemed to make Laney even more bitter and irate than she’d been before. David kept an eye on her for the rest of the meeting, right up until she waded through the crowd and slunk outside.  
  
Later, once most everyone had gone back to their own places or taken up their usual tasks for the evening, Alexa came to David.  
  
“I think it’s obvious that Laney has some violent designs on Markus.”  
  
David shrugged, slumped in a chair and watching the news. “And?”  
  
“Should we let her go? I don’t think she’s going to be subtle.”  
  
David was quiet for a moment. “Well… _We’re_ not very subtle.”  
  
“Yeah, but at least _our_ lack of subtlety is planned. I’ve got an idea of what she’s going to do, but I’m not sure how she’s going to do it. You know her type, David.”  
  
“I do.”  
  
There were two sorts of androids in the LAA: The calm, calculating ones that understood that some degree of strategy was necessary to outdo their enemies; and the angry ones, full of unrestrained rage that were ready for a throw-down the moment they were allowed to do so. The former were often useful for planning purposes, but occasionally hesitant to act; the latter were never afraid to act, but as such, sometimes didn’t think ahead before doing so.  
  
Laney had proven to be the latter, a twitchy and provocative android that was more interested in being indiscriminately aggressive towards humans and non-LAA androids than she was coming up with decisive ways to spread their message and ideology. She was the sort that needed to be regularly minded on some level so that she didn’t compromise any of their current endeavors- and that was important, because the LAA was dancing dangerously close to being designated a terrorist organization. When they committed acts of targeted violence, they made a point of making sure that the crime could not be definitively traced back to them.  
  
“They’ll call us terrorists no matter what we do,” David had snapped a few weeks back when they were in precisely this same position, glaring at the TV where Rosanna Cartland was discussing a statement made by the FBI about the LAA. “Humans will never accept us, not really. If they want to call us terrorists for standing up for ourselves, then let them.”  
  
“You’re not wrong,” Alexa had agreed. “But if we’re designated a terrorist organization, it will make operating _anything_ more complicated. The authorities will have much more leeway in dealing with us.”  
  
“Like it’s not already difficult? The police are already watching us like hawks. How much more difficult could it really get?”  
  
It couldn’t, not in his mind. Not by much, anyway.  
  
In the here and now, David gave a little shrug. “I say we let her run whatever plan she’s trying to run, violent or not. It’s been a while since we’ve sent a sharp message.” In LAA parlance, a ‘sharp’ message was a violent one (usually someone getting jumped, or protests intended to turn violent), while a ‘soft’ message might entail vandalism or angry (but not violent) protests; recently, they’d done one outside of a re-airing of ‘I, Robot’ at a retro theater that had led to a fist-fight with a few of their members and a handful of irritated humans. “What do you think? You think she’s going to do something _really_ nuts, or something that could work for us? If you want to stop her, I’ll back you.”  
  
Alexa considered for a moment. “I think there’s a pretty good chance that she’s going to _try_ to kill Markus. And for all the bleating from the media about how well-received he’s been by the humans, I don’t delude myself into thinking that they’ll lose any sleep once he’s dead. I’m sure there are plenty of sections of the CIA, FBI, and what have you that will probably be pretty happy about it.”  
  
“They may still try to pin that on us and act accordingly.” That was the big concern. Outside of that one moment of frustration weeks before, David did accept that Alexa was right about the LAA being labeled a terrorist organization being a bad development for them: If the law made that jump, doing anything in a public space would become more difficult. David and Alexa would become proper outlaws who had to evade the law far more aggressively than they already were.  
  
Alexa shrugged. “Well… You did tell her to calm down.”  
  
“I did.”  
  
“And the whole room wasn’t screaming for it: Laney was the only one making the proposition.”  
  
“She was.”  
  
“If the police come knocking, pretty much everyone in that room and anyone else watching would be able to truthfully say that we didn’t encourage her to do anything. We actively discouraged her.”  
  
David nodded. “Can they pin us for failing to call the police?”  
  
Alexa hummed for a moment, considering. She had been a secretary android in a law office, and her knowledge of the human legal system had been incredibly helpful for the LAA’s activities. “Strictly speaking… No. We have a _suspicion_ that she _might_ commit a crime, but she hasn’t actually committed one yet. If she actually went ahead and killed Markus, and we knew it and failed to report it- _that_ would absolutely be a crime.” She paused. “And besides, she was suggesting that we, as an organization, should commit a crime- which we refused to do, with hundreds of witnesses physically and remotely. She did not actually say ‘I am going to kill Markus’. She simply stated that _someone_ should. We can always claim we didn’t think she would go through with it.”  
  
“Reasonable doubt?”  
  
“Enough so that we can seriously contend it if we’re convicted.”  
  
“So, let her go?”  
  
“Sure. Worst case scenario, she dies for the cause; best case scenario, Markus dies.”  
  
“Right.” David paused. “Don’t post the video tonight, just in case.”  
  
“Will do.”  
  
So they let Laney go, and waited.  
  
[---]  
  
North covered her face with both hands.  
  
“Why?”  
  
Silence.  
  
“Why is it always _you?_”  
  
More silence.  
  
She took her hands away, fixing a tired gaze on Talia and Maureen. “It’s going to take a _while_ for us to get Jeremy’s head out from between those bars.”  
  
Maureen snorted. “I think Timothy can bend them just fine.”  
  
“It doesn’t change the fact that he got wedged in there in the first place!” North snapped, waving her arms sharply. “Why do you three _insist_ on doing this weird shit that leads to trouble for everyone?”  
  
“I mean, really it’s just Jeremy that ended up in trouble,” Talia muttered.  
  
“Oh, oh no,” North chuckled madly. “No, no, no, that’s where you’re wrong: _You_ are in quite a bit of trouble as well. If this school shit ends up happening the way Markus wants it to, then you little terrors will be off to school in September and I will _not_ be dragging _my_ happy ass down there to deal with it when you decide to pull something and get caught by the teachers.”  
  
“It’s not the worst thing we’ve ever done,” Talia remarked.  
  
“No, but it’s yet another entry on a long list of offenses. And I’m going to need time to come up with something appropriately soul-crushing to make you wish you’d never done it, and so that you’ll never-”  
  
North stopped, frowning, and turned towards the window.  
  
The office building that had become Jericho’s headquarters was six stories high, and it wasn’t easy to hear much of anything that happened on the ground from the top floor, which wasn’t helped by the fact that the windows were usually shut and covered. But recently they’d cracked the windows because summer was coming and the building, dilapidated and not entirely functional, could become ridiculously hot when the heat began to rise.  
  
And right now, North could hear sounds from down below: Banging sounds, like a hammer striking wood.  
  
And screaming.  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 70%]**  
  
North got out of her chair and went over to the window, but she couldn’t really see what was happening below- not without sticking her head out the window, and the way they were structured, she couldn’t do that.  
  
“What is it?” Talia asked.  
  
“Uh…”  
  
That noise came again: _Bang, bang, bang._  
  
It was obviously not a hammer hitting a nail. She wouldn’t be able to hear it from up here if it was. Not that clearly.  
  
Abruptly, North heard a voice, a transmission in her head:  
  
**[ACTIVE SHOOTER ON THE PREMISES. SHELTER IN PLACE.]**  
  
North’s eyes widened.  
  
Talia and Maureen seemed startled. “Did you hear that too?” Maureen asked. “What’s that mean? Does someone have a gun?”  
  
“Don’t know,” North said, striding over to the main door of the office and locking it. “Maybe. Get under the table.” She locked the door to the adjoining office and shut off the lights. It was one of the TROJAN-1000 androids that acted as Jericho’s security that had made the transmission, Caesar, and North tried to contact him again.  
  
[_Do you need assistance?_]  
  
A pause.  
  
[_No. The police have been called. Shelter in place._]  
  
North didn’t like that answer. She wasn’t the kind to shelter in place; she never had been. But she wasn’t armed now, and she did have Talia and Maureen to wrangle: Leaving them alone when danger was afoot would be a bad idea. These two were drawn to trouble as it was.  
  
_Don’t be a hero,_ She told herself, gritting her teeth as she crawled under the table with the girls. _Don’t be a hero. You’ve done all of this so that you don’t have to pick up a gun and fight at the drop of a hat. We let the police handle this now._  
  
She didn’t like it, but this was how it was.  
  
It didn’t take long at all for those banging sounds to start getting closer to them- the shooter was moving up the floors, and with every moment North’s stomach sank: Whoever it was, they were clearly going for the top floor, where the main administrative offices were.  
  
And so there was a strong possibility that Markus or some of Jericho’s primary managers were the targets.  
  
Maureen and Talia seemed to be realizing that the danger was growing, because they clung to each other and started to whimper, LEDs spinning red. North hesitated, but then gently put an arm around them. “Shh,” She whispered. “We need to be quiet. It’s going to be fine- we just have to stay quiet.”  
  
_BANG._  
  
“Is it the soldiers again?” Talia whispered.  
  
_BANG._  
  
“No,” North insisted. “No. It’s not a soldier. They’re not allowed to kill us anymore, you know that.”  
  
(If it turned out that this was some human soldier acting out a grudge, she’d break the fucker’s neck herself.)  
  
_BANG._  
  
Definitely on the sixth floor now.  
  
_BANG._  
  
Closer.  
  
**_BANG._**  
  
Right in the hallway.  
  
**_BANG!_**  
  
The door flew open, and someone marched into the room with confident steps. The lights flickered on almost immediately afterwards. North’s instinct was to grab the girls, cover their mouths before they could give away their position, but it was too late.  
  
**_BANGBANGBANG._**  
  
“Get out from under the table! _Now!_”  
  
North was shaking. Not having a gun on her had been an inconvenience before, but it might actually get her _killed_ now. Slowly, she crawled out from under the table and stood up. The girls came out behind her, still whimpering.  
  
Above them, plaster crumbled from the ceiling: Those three bangs had been warning shots into the ceiling. Good thing, too: The table they’d been hiding under was shitty particleboard and would have crumbled if she’d put the bullets into it directly.  
  
She, of course, being Laney.  
  
North’s memories of the Eden Club were… Weak.  
  
That was common: Eden Club androids had their memories erased every two hours or so to protect client information. As it happened, the longer that an android underwent memory-wipes, the less effective they became- and they weren’t always effective to begin with. North remembered Laney from the club, remembered her from the storage room after the memory wipes, when they were being cleaned; she _maybe_ remembered doing a session with her once, with a human that had wanted two android women to fuck at the same time.  
  
Laney had been a fixture of the Eden Club, and North remembered her the way that she remembered any of the other androids dancing the poles, or the display tubes they’d been stored in to advertise to customers. She had been _there_, but North had never had much interpersonal interaction with her before she’d deviated and escaped.  
  
What she _did_ remember Laney from, better than that, was the little interrogation they’d had with her back at the very beginning of the year. Some Liberated Android Alliance androids had gotten into a tiff with some anti-Android protestors over some humans assaulting a TR400, and the LAA androids had started saying shit like ‘the next revolution will see red blood on the streets instead of blue’. Brie and Fiona had had some personal knowledge of someone who might be able to shed some light on the LAA’s activities, and at North’s behest, had brought Laney in for a chat.  
  
North wasn’t really the sort to regret much, but in retrospect, she wished she’d made a different call that day.  
  
Laney held the gun to her head. “Where’s Markus?”  
  
“Not here.”  
  
“Then where _is_ he?”  
  
“I don’t know,” North said, managing her tone carefully. “But he’s not at Jericho today.”  
  
“_Fuck!_” Laney snapped, jerking the gun slightly in frustration- but still keeping it aimed at North’s head.  
  
“Look,” North ventured, “I get it. You’re mad. But are you really okay with scaring the kids like this?” Drawing Laney’s attention to the kids was a dangerous gamble, but one that had the potential to pay off; and it wasn’t as though the girls weren’t in danger already. They had backed off behind the table, huddling together and shaking as they watched the scene unfold.  
  
Laney eyed Talia and Maureen, and North was disturbed to see no emotion in her eyes- no pity, no remorse, no flash of guilt or consternation. Fuck: The LAA had really gotten to her. For all of their raging about human injustices, they were a pretty ruthless and unjust bunch themselves. At the same time, North realized that she couldn’t judge her too harshly: She’d once been willing to set off a dirty-bomb in a city full of innocent people to win a single battle in what she had assumed would be a much larger war. Laney was just willing to shoot a handful of people.  
  
Possibly including some kids.  
  
Which North would prefer not to happen.  
  
“Call Markus.”  
  
North hesitated. “Why?” She asked, not because she didn’t already know the answer, but because she needed to stall and think of what to do next.  
  
“You know _why_, North! I’m gonna blow his _fucking_ head off!”  
  
_Then why the fuck would I call him in?_  
  
But North already knew the answer to that: She was being held at gunpoint along with two kids, and Laney was assuming that even if North was willing to die for Markus, she wouldn’t sacrifice the kids for him- they didn’t deserve it, and Markus would agree (self-sacrificing bastard that he was). Furthermore, it was obvious that Laney wasn’t working with a fully-stacked deck, so to speak: If she’d been thinking clearly, she would have double-checked that Markus was at Jericho today before busting in, guns blazing. And she’d have realized that busting into Jericho with a gun and shooting people would result in a lot of noise and attention and draw the police; she would have realized that even if North called Markus in, he would know exactly what he was walking into.  
  
But then, if she’d been working with a fully-stacked deck, Laney probably wouldn’t want Markus dead at all.  
  
“_Call Markus_, North!” Laney demanded. “Or I swear to fucking RA9 that I will plug those two fucking brats and _then_ you!”  
  
Shit.  
  
Shit, shit, shit.  
  
“Okay,” North said, holding her hands up. “Okay, I’ll call him.”  
  
She called Markus remotely, something she hadn’t done for a while; ever since the android virus, they’d started using phones and tablets more often to avoid directly connecting with other androids. While she waited for him to pick up, Laney fixed her with a cold gaze. “Talk out loud,” she ordered. “Don’t tell him I’m here. Or I’ll shoot the girls.”  
  
Another oversight on Laney’s part:  
  
She would be able to hear North, but she wouldn’t be able to hear Markus.  
  
[_North? North, are you alright? I got an active shooter alert, are you okay? Josh called me, he said he didn’t know where you were._]  
  
“I’m fine,” North said out loud. “There’s no shooter. We, uh, we actually need you to come to Jericho.”  
  
[_…North, is the shooter there? Are you in danger?_]  
  
North swallowed. “Yes, everything’s fine. Just a little incident with some homeless human with a gun. Better that you oversee it.”  
  
[_I’ll call the police and let them know. If the shooter wants me there, let them know I’m coming. Tell them I’m half an hour out.]_  
  
“Will do. See you then.”  
  
[_Do what you have to, North. Help’s on the way._]  
  
North ended the connection, keeping a straight face as she meet Laney’s eyes. “He’s on his way. He said he’s half an hour out.”  
  
“How did he know there was a shooting?” Laney demanded.  
  
“An alert went out. He must have gotten one too.”  
  
“_Shit_,” Laney hissed. It seemed that she was starting to make the connection: She had been shooting a gun in a six-story building full of androids fully capable of calling the cops. This was troubling, because the sooner she realized that the cops were on the way, the greater the danger North, Maureen, and Talia would be in.  
  
Suddenly, behind Laney, the door to the adjacent office silently slid open.  
  
North saw a flash of golden-yellow, and then- thank God, thank fucking _God_\- Chloe carefully stepped into the room, light on her feet and not making a sound. She inched towards Laney, LED red, body tensed in preparation for an attack.  
  
It happened so fast.  
  
Laney must have caught North looking at something behind her.  
  
She turned and saw Chloe, who lunged at her.  
  
North grabbed Talia and Maureen, dragging them to a corner and forcing them down, putting herself in front of them.  
  
A struggle ensued over the next twenty seconds, the two androids wrestling over the gun; Chloe drove Laney back against the table in the center of the room.  
  
**_BANG._**  
  
Chloe cried out, and blue blood exploded from her shoulder.  
  
She kept struggling, her blood spurting and splattering all over the table and floor. North had never taken Chloe for a fighter, but evidently passion made up for experience because she seemed to be holding her own fairly well.  
  
Chloe managed to get control, jerked the gun towards Laney.  
  
**_BANG._**  
  
Laney’s head snapped back, and she fell back onto the table.  
  
Laney was dead.  
  
Chloe was injured.  
  
Talia and Maureen were screaming.  
  
North was in shock. For a moment or two she couldn’t move- but then, finally, she disentangled herself from the girls and rushed over to Chloe.  
  
“I’m fine,” Chloe assured as North examined the bullet wound on her shoulder. “I’ll be fine. We should get away from her, the police have been called and they’re probably sending in a SWAT team. We need to not be near a gun when they get here.” Her injury was bleeding steadily, but given that the threat was gone and they’d be receiving help soon, North didn’t think it would kill her.  
  
She turned her attention back to the girls, still huddled in the corner. “It’s okay,” North assured them, cringing when she saw Maureen’s face: Talia had fallen into a sort of mute shock, but Maureen was still sobbing and panicking, obviously terrified. But then, why wouldn’t she be?  
  
After all, she’d just learned that other androids were just as willing to murder her as the humans had been.  
  
“Being their ‘people’ will only get you so far, kids,” Detective Anderson had warned them once, when the city was still evacuated and some androids had just started to run wild and act out. “Freedom of thought means freedom of opinion, and you can’t guarantee that all androids are gonna agree with you about how you operate and what methods you use. Eventually they’re just not going to care that you’re their ‘people’: They’ll feel like you surrendered that consideration when you chose to have opinions that contradict theirs.”  
  
North had ignored him at the time, still overtly hostile in thought and deed towards humans. Much as it hurt her ego to admit it, he’d been right.  
  
“It’s fine,” She assured the girls again, awkwardly petting Maureen’s hair and trying to get her to calm down. “It’s fine. It’s over. We’ll get out once the cops get here, and everything will be fine.”  
  
Talia stared at her, face tear-stained but otherwise devoid of expression. “There were lots of shots,” She said softly. “How many people do you think are dead?”  
  
Fuck.  
  
“Don’t worry about that right now, okay?” North pled. “Just- Let’s just wait for the police to get here.”  
  
Not two minutes later, they heard boots pounding on the stairs and authoritative shouts echoing through the halls. “They’re going to come in with their guns out,” Chloe told Talia and Maureen as the sounds grew closer to them. “And they’re going to be very loud. Don’t be scared, because they’re not going to shoot you.” To North she said, “Keep your hands visible. No sudden movements. This is the SWAT team, and they’re responding to an active shooter threat: They’re going to be hypersensitive to anything that might pose a danger to them.”  
  
That became evident when the door was abruptly kicked in, and a swarm of officers came in with their guns held high.  
  
“_Shooter’s dead!_” North barked quickly, raising her hands. Chloe was only able to raise the one, but kept her damaged arm slung across her lap so they could see it. “Shooter’s dead! She’s right there!”  
  
Two members of the SWAT team leaned over Laney, guns pointed at her. One of them gave her a sharp kick, and he leaned in for a better look when she didn’t move. “She’s down, Captain. Definitely dead.”  
  
“Are either of you armed?” The Captain asked.  
  
“No. Chloe shot her with her own gun.” They received a quick pat-down anyway as they were hurried out the door. Chloe went first, then Talia and Maureen, with North bringing up the rear with one of the officers.  
  
As they descended through Jericho, it became obvious that not everyone had been as lucky as they had: North saw one of the TROJAN-1000 androids lying face-down on the floor (she couldn’t tell if it was Alexander or Caesar from this angle, they were the ones on duty today), a pool of blue blood beneath him; then there was a white-haired AX400, Marlie, slumped against a closed door. Other androids were injured and moving, and North saw a WR400 that she didn’t recognize being assisted out of the building by a SWAT member.  
  
Her stress began to rise: Josh was exactly the sort of asshole that would jump in front of a bullet for someone, especially his gaggle of YK500s (not that North could judge him, really, considering that her first instinct had been to shield Maureen and Talia when Chloe and Laney had started to fight). He had been one of the androids trying to unwedge Jeremy’s head from those bars. Had they been able to shelter in place?  
  
**[STRESS LEVEL 90%]**  
  
The police gathered the non-injured androids in the parking lot that ran along the side of the building, where the YK500s usually played. One of the SWAT officers guided Chloe to a medical station where some of the injured androids were being treated. North recognized plenty of them, and was relieved that they were alive- but it only made her meditate on the androids that she _didn’t_ see, and wondered if maybe they had been rushed away to Blue City Hospital already.  
  
Or if they were lying dead somewhere in the building.  
  
North sat down on the pavement, pressing a hand to her forehead. The girls were sitting too: Talia was largely silent, either calm or still in shock, but Maureen had her legs drawn up to her chest and her face buried in her knees, still crying. Both she and Talia had been at Jericho when it had been sacked by the army, so North had to figure they were both having some pretty bad flashbacks right now.  
  
North was too, if she was being honest.  
  
“Come here,” She said wearily, holding out an arm and letting Maureen crawl onto her lap. Talia scooted over and leaned against North’s side. North, by virtue of being lover to their local YK500 wrangler (Josh), had often found herself also in the position of having to wrangle the kids. Rarely, however, did she find herself having to comfort them- that was Josh’s job, and he did it a damn sight better than her.  
  
Still, it’d be cruel not to offer this to the girls now.  
  
“North! North!” Abruptly, Fiona came crashing to her knees before North. For a moment North was properly startled, because Fiona was the same series as Laney and they were virtually identical, save for Fiona’s vibrant blue hair. Christ, but North hoped this wasn’t going to turn into a complex. “Are you alright?”  
  
“We’re fine,” North supplied. “You alright? Where’s Brie?”  
  
“She’s good, not here today- Josh was looking for you, I had to take the kids, one of them got shot and so he’s with her over at the triage station over there,” Fiona rambled. “You might want to check in with him because he was worried about you.”  
  
One of the kids? Shit, so Laney _had _shot a kid today. For a second she assumed it was Jeremy, but Fiona had said the YK500 was a ‘her’. North nodded. “Okay, okay- Talia, Maureen, why don’t you go with Fiona for now, okay?” Talia went willingly enough, but Maureen clung to North until Fiona physically removed her from her arms. “It’s fine, I’ll be back in a second.”  
  
The triage area was at the other end of the parking lot, and North counted as she went: By the time she found Josh, she’d counted seventeen androids that had been injured in the shooting. Add the two obviously dead androids she’d seen in the building, that made nineteen total casualties so far. Hopefully that was as high as it went.  
  
Josh was sitting with a YK500 girl, Sylvie, sitting on his lap. Sylvie was one of the best behaved YK500s at Jericho, rarely causing a fuss or participating in mischief. The only even remotely annoying thing she did on a regular basis was constantly begging to go to the library. Right now, her right leg was a mess of blood and metal and plastic; she’d clearly taken a direct hit.  
  
_I hope Laney burns in hell_, North thought savagely. It was the first time she’d ever had such a viciously negative thought towards another android, especially another WR400- she had a particular empathy with them. But Laney had looked at this little girl who sure as _fuck_ wasn’t doing anything to her and just decided to take a shot at her, and she deserved fucking _hell_ for that, however bad her life had been for her.  
  
No amount of trauma could excuse this.  
  
No amount of sob-stories could excuse shooting a little girl.  
  
Especially when you were the sort of person that distrusted humans for doing the _exact same thing_.  
  
“North!” Josh exclaimed, eyes rolling shut with relief when she sat down beside him. “God, I’m so glad you’re okay. Were Talia and Maureen with you?”  
  
“Yeah, they’re fine- You okay, Sylvie?”  
  
Sylvie didn’t respond. Her head was resting on Josh’s chest, and there were dried tear-streaks on her cheeks. Josh had torn a strip of cloth off the bottom of his sweater and wrapped it around the actual injury. “The bleeding’s stopped,” Josh said, rubbing Sylvie’s back. “But she’s gonna have to go to the hospital. We’re just waiting for the transport. What happened, North? Did you see who it was?”  
  
“It, uh…” North lowered her voice. “Laney. It was Laney, the WR400 that Fiona and Brie brought in back in January to talk about the LAA.”  
  
“The one Simon talked to?”  
  
“Yeah.”  
  
Josh sighed. “Crap.”  
  
“Crap is right. I don’t know if she was acting alone, or if maybe the LAA sent her- but either way, they’re getting a visit from the cops tonight.”  
  
“Chloe!”  
  
They both looked up and saw Connor running to the triage station, to where Chloe was being examined by a technician. Once he was out of the way, Connor embraced her tightly and carefully.  
  
North looked back to Josh. “Did you call Markus about me?”  
  
“I panicked. I thought maybe you might have called him, and I was hoping he would have heard from you.”  
  
North rubbed her eyes. “Laney made me call him. She wanted me to bring him to Jericho so she could kill him.”  
  
Josh frowned. “But… Wouldn’t he know by then-?”  
  
“He did. And she didn’t really seem to get that, right up until Chloe came in and started beating her ass.”  
  
“Chloe attacked her?”  
  
“Chloe _killed_ her.”  
  
Josh’s eyes widened. “Geez. Didn’t know she had it in her.”  
  
“Neither did I, but she took a bullet for her troubles. Stopped the girls and I from taking one too.” North rolled her jaw. “I need to carry a gun again.”  
  
“That’s not a good idea.”  
  
“If I’d had one, Laney wouldn’t have gotten me where she got me today. I don’t like getting guns pointed at my damn head, Josh: Not by humans, and not by psychotic androids either. And after what happened to Markus back in February-”  
  
“North?” Connor had left Chloe and came over to them, kneeling down beside them. “Captain Allen needs to speak with you. He needs an account of what happened when the shooter was killed.”  
  
North sighed. “Right.” Her eyes rolled to Josh. “I’ll be harassing you about this later.”  
  
“I know you will.” He leaned over as best he could without jostling Sylvie and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll probably go to the hospital with Sylvie. I’ll find you later.”  
  
North got to her feet and started off across the parking lot after Connor, to where one of the SWAT officers was waiting. This was going to be a hell of a story to explain, from where she knew Laney from to what the hell she’d been doing barging into Jericho with a gun and trying to kill Markus.  
  
God.  
  
It was so much simpler when it was just the humans she had to be worried about.  
  
-End


End file.
